I grew up in the Midwest, land of Lincoln, corn, and tornadoes. We had tornado drills in school as often as we had fire drills, and I certainly experienced more tornadoes in my lifetime — and in fact, never a fire.
I’ve noticed, this week, as reports file in and are updated and revised on the death toll, the estimated damage, that no matter how I receive news, an event of this nature overwhelms and
Image from the Daily Beast
overshadows all other content. It’s hard to even see or hear news beyond the tornadoes — even important news — when the consumers of news demand more pictures of devastation, stores of the survivors and the lost.
I can appreciate the focus on this and other tragedies, but I can’t help but wonder, at what price? When we narrow our vision to reflect on tragedies in our backyards and spend, perhaps, too much time looking at images or listening to interviews from the “ground zero” witnesses, what are we missing?
There are no artificial filters to help with this — it comes down to choices we make as consumers of news, but I think we should be cautious, and wary, that in the wake of tragedies such as this, our underbelly is exposed, and we need to still be vigilant in all other arenas, even while the first responders are still on site.
From time to time, I join my friend Coy Barefoot in the studio at Newsradio WINA to discuss the social media/media news of the day. In our last broadcast together, we talked a little bit about the holidays; how they’re often difficult for people dealing with grief. In this era of frequent self-publishing and access to larger and larger audiences, there’s a growing tendency to overshare on social networks. We’ve all seen it, and many of us have done it — posting overly personal thoughts without regard to the audience and the impact our words may have on others.